In electric apparatuses, some of them can be on-off operated from a remote place through push button operations on a telephone when the user is out.
For example, in an air conditioning apparatus serving as such an apparatus, the user makes a phone call on a push-button-type telephone when he or she is out, so as to confirm the operation state of the apparatus and switch the operation/stop states through push-button operations.
More specifically, as shown in FIG. 5, a tele-controller device 2 (hereinafter, referred to as “tele-con”) is connected to an air conditioning apparatus 1, and this tele-con 2 is connected to a public telephone line network 3. Then, a dial-up connection is made to the tele-con 2 from a push-button-type telephone 4 located at a remote place, and after the personal identification and the like have been made by inputting a pass number, a predetermined signal is transmitted to the tele-con 2 by push-button operations through the push-button-type telephone 4 so that the on-off control is carried out on the air conditioning apparatus 1. Here, a controller 5, which is used by the user at home to control the air conditioning apparatus 1 in the vicinity thereof, is connected to the air conditioning apparatus 1; thus, modes are switched between a home-use mode and a tele-control mode (hereinafter, referred to as “tele-con mode”) by using this controller 5.
Therefore, in the case of the home-use mode, the user operates the controller 5 at home so as to control the air conditioning apparatus 1, while, in the case when the user is out, after the mode has been switched to the tele-con mode by the controller 5, the remote control is carried out on the air conditioning apparatus 1 by using a push-button-type telephone 4 located at a remote place through the public telephone line network 3 and the tele-con 2. Here, the functions of the remote control are basically determined by a software program that is built in the tele-con 2.
However, in the above described conventional methods, when there is no push-button-type telephone 4 where the user goes out, no operation is available. However, in recent years, along with the developments of the Internet, new communication media or communication apparatuses such as cellular phones and personal computers with communication functions have been generally used, and there have been ever-increasing demands for methods of remote-control operations of electric apparatuses suitable for these various platforms.
Moreover, in some cases, there is a demand for adding an operation menu for remote-controlling that has not been prepared at the time of the shipment of each electric apparatus. For example, in the case of the air conditioning apparatus 1 serving as the electric apparatus, there are some demands for adding automatic setting functions for rainy season and dry season in winter in humidity adjustments and for adding new automatic temperature adjustments and the like to the operation menu so as to adjust to any un-precedential weather due to the current abnormal weather. In such cases, in the above-mentioned prior-art methods in which all the remote control functions are defined by software programs inside the tele-con 2, even when the maker of an electric apparatus attempts to add and update an operation menu, functions and the like, the maker needs to recall all the tele-cons 2 or go to the installation sites of the tele-cons 2 so as to update the inner software program. Therefore, actually, it has been difficult to add new functions and update the operation menu in remote control systems.